Throughout human history, religion has inspired the full range of human action, from the heinous to the heroic. The study of history is thus incomplete without attention to religious people, institutions, and ideas. Yet for many educators, talking about religion in the classroom can be challenging and even intimidating. This workshop will offer educators an introduction to the best practices for teaching about religion in history classes, examples of how other teachers have done it, and a hands-on opportunity to develop their own lesson plan that puts this principles into practice. It draws on the method and resources of the Religious Literacy Project at Harvard Divinity School, one of the leading resources for K-12 educators on teaching about religion.

The first session of this workshop will be a roundtable discussion. Lauren Kerby, Education Specialist at Harvard’s Religious Literacy Project (RLP), will introduce the RLP’s method for teaching about religion, which reflects the best practices endorsed by the American Academy of Religion and the National Council for the Social Studies. Karen Johnson, Associate Professor of History at Wheaton College, will then discuss the challenges and opportunities for teachers when engaging a subject that touches on students’ identities, specifically religion and race. Finally, two high school teachers will share specific lesson plans that illustrate how to put these principles into practice when teaching about religion in a high school history class. Monika Johnston, chair of the History Department at Packer Collegiate Institute, will discuss how she teaches the Crusades in her ninth-grade world history class and share her tools for helping students understand the relationship between religion and violence. Abigail Esposito, a teacher at Conard High School, will discuss how religion and religious freedom comes up in her unit on US imperialism and foreign policy in her tenth-grade US History class. James Fraser, Professor of History and Education at New York University, will preside over this session. After the panelists have concluded their remarks, there will be ample time for conversation among the panelists, the presider, and the audience.